The Man I Love (The Fish Tales, #1)(27)

The air in the little room was close and warm, redolent with anticipation, sweat, sex, the faint smell of latex overlaid with Daisy’s perfume. She lay back and pulled him along with her. He gathered the covers up around them, tucking them into a cocoon. Her hand was tender at the back of his neck, her knees inching up his hips.

“Come inside me,” she whispered.

Cradled in her thighs, pressing the tip of his cock to that hot, pink cave, he had to take a split-second to absorb what this meant. He was her first. She had chosen him. He would belong to her after tonight. Belong to her history.

It was almost more than his young male ego could process. And in an instant of reflection, he grasped man’s need to walk where none had walked before. He understood Columbus and Neil Armstrong and Hillary and Peary. And he pushed into her, hungry to take the step for his own mankind.

Daisy sucked in her breath and her back arched so suddenly Erik froze. He was sure he had hurt her. He backed off, no longer Prince Henry the Navigator but just an amateur lover, a nineteen-year-old emotional virgin.

“I’ll stop,” he said.

“No, no, go on.”

“I’m hurting you.”

“No.” Her damp hands held his head. “You’re not hurting me,” she whispered against his mouth. “It’s just really tight.”

It was. All of her body was an incredible squeezing pressure around him. He was in some primitive place, the first, the only, the one, sliding his cock into the gripping heat, the sensual effort to get inch by delicious inch inside her nearly undoing him.

“Is it all right?” he whispered, barely holding it together.

“Yes,” she said, her voice filled with laughing wonder. “It’s good. God it’s… It’s good.”

Then he was on his elbows, stretched full out on top of her, his sword sheathed to the hilt. She wound her legs around him and they held still, kissing, whispering, feeling their bodies joined.

“I love you so much,” he whispered.

“God, I love you,” she murmured beneath him, her hands sliding over his skin. “You feel so good in me.” She ran her shaking mouth up his neck. “I knew you would.”

“You’re so tight.” He was trying to move in her, trying to make it into something more.

“It feels so good,” she said. She was beautiful and exhilarated under him. Too beautiful. And he was too young, too excited, too inexperienced with making love and being in love. He tried to hang on to his desire, rearing and pawing like an untamed colt at the stable doors. But she kept whispering in his ear, responding to every move he made inside her and it was too much. The colt busted free and ran for the pastures, dragging Erik behind. He turned inside out and poured into her.

She hung onto him with arms and legs, crooning, stuck to his body like a starfish on a rock, riding out the tremors. Interminable minutes passed. The colt slowed to a walk. Erik’s heartbeat grew softer in his ears. The mist of sweat on his body felt cooler. Finally he lifted up his head to look at her.

She smiled at him, but tears were dripping from the corners of her eyes, running diagonally along her cheeks. Erik’s thumbs smudged them away.

“Don’t cry,” he whispered through a throat of iron.

“I’m just happy.”

The minutes passed in kissing, and he felt the muscles in Daisy’s body quiver and relax. First one leg, then the other dropped off his hips. Then her head fell back on the pillow. Finally her arms released, which he took as a signal, and rolled off her.

“Oh,” she said, looking down between them. He looked, and the condom was smeared scarlet. It wasn’t a lot. But it was definitely blood.

“Is it your period?”

“No, it was over weeks ago.”

“Then…did I do that?”

“I guess.”

“And it didn’t… You’re not hurt?”

“No, not at all…” Her confidence seemed rattled. “Sorry,” she said, a little meekly, which he found odd.

“Don’t be,” he said. He looked down again. He had made her bleed. He touched it, mesmerized, rubbing the warm tackiness. Now he could see Daisy’s thighs were smudged with it. A small, bright rose had bloomed on the mattress beneath her.

“Can you get me a towel?” she asked.

“Yeah. One sec.” He pushed up on an elbow, dipped a finger and began to trace letters on her leg, just above her bent knee. E. Then R.

“What are you doing?” But she was laughing, and her hand caressed his head.

He smiled, not sure himself, but into it, carefully making the crossbars of the I. Boldly, he slid his finger into her, and then finished with a strong K. And there, on her leg, his name, in her blood.

“Now you’re mine,” he said. She looked down at her leg, up at him, and her eyes turned wicked. Her hand, which had been soft in his hair, seized the nape of his neck and pulled him on her again, all of his body along hers. She opened her mouth under his, wound her limbs around him like vines. Caught up in her savage and greedy grip, he kissed her, crushed her down into the bed even as the joy in him spiraled up through the roof and burst into the sky. He had always known the one was out there and he had found her.

And he had marked her in blood.





Part Two: James